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Hers is a small apartment on the 14th floor. She keeps a neat place. She uses a small bedroom for storage, and she sleeps in the front room.

The problem?

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The drywall below the window retained only memories of dryness; it was water-damaged, damp and smelly, and the worst of it had fallen off or been pulled away. She said, “There’s been mice running out of there. I have a trap at each end.” The traps have not stopped the mice.

Somebody from TCHC came by a while ago and took a look. “He said there’s a pipe; it’s leaking. He put his hand in there and pulled insulation; it was really wet. He said he’d fix it, he’d be back in a week or two.” He has, as you might guess, not been back.

And I’m not sure if it really is a leaking pipe. The hole in the wall is below her window; it could be leakage from rain; it could be some sort of leakage from the apartment above.

“They had some people last year, outside the window working on the brick; they say it’s the window. But another guy from TCHC says it’s the pipe.”

Do you really think it matters where the water is coming from when there should be no water at all?

Kelly said, with some indignation, “TCHC even says I put the water in there myself; why would I do that?”

She has taped a piece of plastic over the hole. She has a little air purifier. She said, “I’m asthmatic; the smell.” I am willing to bet you know that nostril-pinching smell, just as I am willing to bet you would not put up with it.

“I had somebody come in about mould issues. He found no issue.” He must not have been looking very hard. She’s been trying to get the hole in the wall fixed since last April.

Since. Last. April.

You do not have to live like that. I do not have to live like that. The people who run community housing do not have to live like that.

Is there mould anywhere else besides her front room? “The bathroom has mould. I put in a fan.” She put a fan in her bathroom? Is there no built-in fan? “The fan in the bathroom doesn’t work. People in other units, they hide their drugs in the ducts. When they do that, the fans don’t work.”

Kelly has lived in this building for seven years. She has led a life that would have crushed you or me. She was on the street for several years.

She said, “I’d rather be back in a shelter than live like this. I’m a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. I smell the marijuana in here. It makes me sick.”

And then there’s the parallel issue of safety; one of her neighbours was robbed. “Even my disability worker is scared to come here. I’ve been approached. There have been people knocking on my door asking for money. There have been six supers since I’ve been here.”

I don’t really know what’s going on at TCHC, not since the turbo-charged Gene Jones muddied the waters and got the boot. There may be new people in place, but not much has changed at 10 Glen Everest.

In the absence of help from TCHC, Kelly has her eye on some subsidized housing run by a private charity. She will, if she gets in, be better off.

I'll be talking to TCHC about this and other issues at 10 Glen Everest in a column to come.

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